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PASADENA, Calif.—NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers are planning to create the coldest spot in the known universe inside the International Space Station (ISS). “We’re going to study matter at temperatures far colder than are found naturally,” said Rob Thompson, project scientist for NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, an atomic ‘refrigerator’ slated for launch to the ISS in 2016. “We aim to push effective temperatures down to 100 pico-Kelvin.” 100 pico-Kelvin is only ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero, where all the thermal activity of atoms theoretically stops. At such low temperatures, ordinary concepts of solid, liquid and gas are no longer relevant. The lab is also a place where researchers can mix super-cool atomic gases and see what happens. “Mixtures of different types of atoms can float together almost completely free of perturbations,” said Thompson, “allowing us to make sensitive measurements of very weak interactions. This could lead to the discovery of interesting and novel quantum phenomena.” That is due to a basic principle of thermodynamics: when a gas expands, it cools.
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